Theaster Gates Jr.

39, Artist, developer and activist

Theaster Gates is a sculptor/potter/builder/performer who describes himself as "an artist with an expanded practice," bringing new life to old buildings in Grand Crossing, a few miles south of the Loop.

He's restoring the old Stony Island State Savings Bank on 68th Street into a site that will serve as a gathering place for performers, big thinkers and anyone interested in seeing the book and magazine collection owned by Ebony and Jet publisher Johnson Publishing Co. (It will be housed there.)

Not far from there, Mr. Gates opened Black Cinema House — a space for screening films by and about African-Americans — in a renovated two-story home. And he plans to convert worn-down Chicago Housing Authority apartments into artists' housing.

"Theaster's greatest influence is his experience growing up on the West Side," says Monica Haslip, executive director of Little Black Pearl, a nonprofit cultural arts center in Kenwood where Mr. Gates was director of education outreach in 2005. "It informed his work as an artist and as an urban planner."

Mr. Gates' art — which has been showcased at the Whitney Museum of American Art's 2010 Biennial exhibition and at Documenta, an influential art show in Kassel, Germany — goes beyond paint on canvas. He combines craft, history and music to re-create the way we think about space. But don't use the word "community" to describe his work.

"That implies a kind of altruism or a kind of philanthropic generosity that I'm not involved in," he says. "The fact that we're working on these buildings, it's just the work we ought to do."